What Gothic Literature Taught Me About Sleepless Nights

 

Good evening my friends. Isn’t May a lovely time of the year? Those bright evenings slowly blend with beautiful salmon coloured silk skies, suddenly deepening into an eerie navy but not quite as unsettling as an October night. Yet, some evenings it’s still chill enough to light the fire in the library because somehow you know, you just know, that sleep will be elusive and when you get that feeling, it’s nice to have something warm to wrap around your shoulders and to curl your toes at.

Now, where are my manners? Let me get you a glass of something and get comfy, Lady Cora Cat has decided to join us tonight. She likes the fire, and the chat.

The Hour When the World Stops Explaining Itself

In that in between time, after I have finished writing a book, and before the polishing begins, I love to sit down with a good book, or sometimes, a good movie.  My reading time usually begins in the hour when the world stops explaining itself. 

The library, unlike the Scriptorium, where I write, is larger, lots of nooks and crannies, where the shadows like to move around. They appear bigger than usual because of the light cast from the flame of the fire. In the library the two windows are left bare, so the moonlit trees cast their own theatre across the walls. 

It’s a scene that sticks with you particularly after midnight, because the ghosts of the previous residents stir and they have very particular ideas what is acceptable reading material at the witching hour. 

Those nights when my insomnia decides to visit, she arrives with purpose. She brings me back to books that I have been promising myself but for reasons better left until after the midnight hour, I rarely reach for. So, I find myself sitting comfortably by the fire, book in hand and the gentle tapping on the window nudges my sleep deprived mind into a gothic classic.

Gothic Fiction as a Language for Restlessness

Gothic fiction isn’t just a language for that restlessness, it gives it shape, texture and image. 

A black cover. A hellish image of a man dragged naked, inverted by a demonic creature with wings. This is the Penguin Classics edition of The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. The book itself was notorious in its day and condemned by critics for being blasphemous. Listed as a romance, The Monk is one of the least romantic books ever written. What it is, however, is rich in atmosphere and uneasiness. Typical of the gothic genre and paired with imagery reminiscent of Dutch artist, Hieronymus Bosch. It leaves you steeped in a heightened state of fear, and dread, with an overactive imagination running ahead of you.

Lewis is best read with low lighting, a cat preferably one without the midnight zoomies and staring at the corner of the ceiling where something may or may not be lurking. 

Sometimes, usually around October, I return to him, alongside that mistress of tension, Ann Radcliffe, particularly the Mysteries of Udolpho, or even The Italian. These villains are probably the most wicked and despotic in Gothic fiction. I love a good villain but with Radcliffe, you get more, you are pulled into a deep psychological dread, which keeps you looking at the shadows and wondering ‘What was that?’ 

When Shadows Start to Mean Something

For me, alone in a room where the shadows are dancing, the air has just changed, perhaps the fire has gone down, or maybe it’s something else. I don’t know if because of the book I have chosen is the reason for this change, or it could be something else that’s stirring. I remember reading some gothic fiction as a teenager, under the cover with a flashlight, the words felt different. Yet, reading them in daylight, you get another kind of meaning, less fear perhaps, or maybe something else altogether. 

The Comfort of Being Awake in a Haunted World

Do you remember as a kid, or a teenager, having a sleep over with your friends and reading books that were dark, in atmosphere, full of adventure, but heavy with a delicious kind fear? There’s something strangely comforting about being awake in that haunted state, or world, where you want to sleep but the words keep pulling at you page after page. 

That my friends, is the true allure of gothic fiction, written by the pioneers whose imagination and use of language transports you from your own reality to a haunted world where shadows, like your mind, play tricks on you.

Until next time, my lovelies, sleep well, and if you can’t… I do recommend Radcliffe, Lewis or Walpole.

Anna